Professor Max Lu has been President and Vice-Chancellor of University of Surrey since April 2016. Previously he was Provost and Senior Vice-President at the University of Queensland, Australia. He has been appointed to the Boards of National Physical Laboratory, Universities UK, Leadership Council of the National Centre for Universities and Business and as Deputy Lieutenant of Surrey. He is also a patron of Transforming Housing.
Professor Lu lectured at Nanyang Technological University from 1991 to 1994, and had held academic and leadership positions at the University of Queensland from 1994 to 2016, rising from senior lecturer to chair professor. He founded the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Functional Nanomaterials and served as its inaugural director for 8 years. He was awarded the Australian Research Council (ARC) Federation Fellowship twice, respectively, in 2003 and 2008.
As a Thomson Reuters double Highly Cited Researcher in both Materials Science and Chemistry, he has published over 500 journal papers on nanomaterials (h=107 and over 44,000 citations @Scopus). He is co-inventor of more than 20 granted international patents. He has been honoured with numerous awards including Orica Award, RK Murphy Medal, Le Fevre Prize, ExxonMobil Award, China International Science and Technology Award, Japan Chemical Society Lecture Award, Chemeca Medal, and P.V. Danckwerts Lecture. He was also recently honoured with a Medal of the Order of Australia (Officer in the General Division) for his distinguished service to education and international research in the field of materials chemistry and nanotechnology, to engineering, and to Australia-China relations.
Professor Lu has served on many government committees and advisory boards including those under the Australian Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council, ARC College of Experts, Australian Synchrotron, Stem Cells Australia. He is Fellow of IChemE, Royal Society of Chemistry, Australian Academy of Science, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, and World Academy of Science.
